Why and how to title a poem

Once in a while a title for a poem comes to mind before a poem’s appearance, but usually each new poem arrives in need of a name.

Why bother? You might not need to if you write traditional haiku or number your poems in a sonnet sequence. Most of the time though, leaving a poem untitled works about as well as not naming a child. How would you call the kid to dinner? How would you claim a child without I.D.? How would you report a missing person or a kidnapped poem with no name to identify it as yours?

Titles help you to:

Keep track of each poem's whereabouts.

Discuss the poem with a potential editor.

Catch the attention of a reader flipping pages.

But how do poets find effective titles, over and over again?

To call a poem to your mind or to someone else's, try these suggestions:

Jot down each relevant word, phrase, or symbol that fits the central thought, theme, or image of your poem.

For a humorous poem, consider a word play, alliteration, or cliché you can alter to enhance the humor. For instance, a children’s word game I called “Silly Sound Alike” kept coming back until I changed its title to "Ring Goes the Homophone."

For dramatic emphasis, select one word or symbol.

Or, make the title snap in five words or less.

Or, play with an unusually long title to create humor or make a serious statement or help readers enter into the experience of a poem that might otherwise be indecipherable to anyone who doesn’t know what’s happening.

For more on titles see “Title-Tales: on finding effective titles for your poems.”

© 2012, Mary Harwell Sayler


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Title Tales: on finding effective titles for your poems

The other day a poet said he always starts a new poem with a title, which bothered me only because of the word “always.” Poems often do offer up their names by way of introduction to get our attention or coax us into taking the time to write down whatever follows. However, an effective title – for the poet and for the reader – generally acts as an open door. If, though, that door locks the lines too tightly before they have their say, the title can hinder the poet and also the readers from getting to know a poem beyond the nodding acquaintance of a name.

To give you examples of titles that seemed to work reasonably well, I scanned the list of poems I’ve placed over the years, and here’s what I found:

A title hints but does not give away the story. For example, my title “After Selling Joseph into Slavery” draws on a familiar Bible story to examine how Judah might have felt after he and his siblings sold the younger brother of whom they were so jealous.

A title might be one word, one phrase, or one long sentence that meanders into a poem. “The Middle-Aged Mother Goes Up, Up, Up in Iambic Pentameter with Champagne After” sets the stage for a rhythmic poem about my terrified then buoyant experience of riding in a hot air balloon.

A title entices but does not tease readers with fake labels. “Abracadabra” sounds like a magic trick but was actually the title rhat came to me for a light poem with a rhyme scheme of a, b, c, and d with r for repetition.

A title gives a poem a tag your readers can remember. “Bugged” tagged a humor piece about my efforts to kill a cockroach that just would not stay dead.

A title plays with words, sounds, thoughts, and symbols until the poet finds an appropriate name. As I stressed over a subject to write about, the title “Following the Brick Road” played with a Wizard of Oz symbol for finding my way home and writing about what I care about or know.

A title seldom repeats or replays what the poem says or shows. Using a title to repeat words or phrases in a poem usually seems like a waste of space! Nevertheless, I entitled a poem “Wait” to emphasize something my religious readers (and I) often need to consider. Apparently the title had the desired effect because the poem has been accepted and published over the last fifteen years by five different editors, but see what you think. Better yet, read the poem aloud and, hopefully, you will hear why I chose to repeat a word from such a short poem for the one-word title:

Wait!

Wait for God to respond.
He hears.
He turns toward His crying child.
He reaches down into your clay crib
and brings you up, high,
high,
into His bosom.
He sets you on His shoulder.
He jostles you on His knee.
And when you're comforted and quiet,
He holds you closely
and teaches you to speak,
to pray.

by Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved.

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© 2011, Mary Sayler

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